3-D Printers: Who Are Their Customers?

The additive manufacturing market might be small today, but it's scaling up incredibly quickly.

The consolidated 3-D printing industry did $2.2 billion of revenue in 2012. That figure is estimated to grow to $3.7 billion by 2015 and $6.5 billion by 2019. With an overall industry annual growth rate of nearly 17%, there will certainly be some winners that emerge from this hurricane-force tailwind at their backs.

As the majority of this industry's growth will come in later years, strategic decisions being made by the major players today could have a huge influence on their future profitability. This introduces an interesting question: What type of customers are the 3-D printing companies targeting?

In the following video, Rule Breakers analyst Simon Erickson digs into the 3-D printing market and reviews the competitive positioning of three Motley Fool recommendations: Stratasys (SSYS 0.96%), 3D Systems (DDD 2.31%), and ExOne (XONE).